The present disclosure relates to identifying user equipments (UEs), and more particularly to controlling access attempts by multiple UEs to protected content.
Users can desire to access network accessible content from many different UEs, such as desktop computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, mobile phones, game consoles, media players, etc. At times, a user may attempt over time to access content from more than one UE. Typically, the user is permitted by a network accessible content server to have unrestricted access to the content from any UE after successfully completing authentication of user supplied credentials and determining that the user has authorized access.
Some computer systems attempt to restrict access, such as to documents containing confidential information or copyrighted works, to only authorized users who are operating authorized UEs. The authorized UEs may be allowed access because they are determined to be more secure by design and/or trusted because of a known relationship to the authorized users. Such computer systems need a way to restrict access to content by UEs and users having a unique identities. However, fraudsters have developed sophisticated techniques to obtain credentials of users who are authorized to access content. Some of these fraudsters have moreover developed sophisticated techniques to enable non-authorized UEs to impersonate authorized UEs.
Using third party cookies as a way to identify UEs is being phased out due to privacy concerns and the ability of users to prevent or interfere with their use. Cookieless device identification has therefore become an important goal of operation for some computer systems. Not being able to reliably identify a UE can create a potential system entry point for users with unauthorized or malicious intent to access or modify services. Techniques for authenticating users using, e.g., one time passwords (OTPs) can be viewed as unacceptably inconvenient by the users. Developing a list of blacklisted devices by one computer system may not be useful to other computer systems, particularly when operated in different system domains, e.g., under ownership of different entities. If computer systems could rely on trusted universal identification for UEs, at least some of these challenges could be reduced or overcome.